Illusion

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Sunday, January 29, 2017

2017. It's been a little less than a year since I last wrote something here. I am pretty sure nobody reads this considering I hardly come here even though it's my blog. Anyway, I cannot find it in my heart to abandon this space. I have poured a lot of my frustrations out here. My blog has been a mute spectator to my turbulent growing-up and always been present whenever I came back to it...to pour something out...

Now more than ever, I get the feeling of finally being an adult. Why? Because I have kind of begun to accept things that have bothered me so much in the past but are frankly out of my control. I have kind of learnt to just look the other way when I am let down by people I have tried to hold so close. Maybe because I have held them so close, I am constantly let down. With this acceptance though, comes a very unexpected feeling. The feeling of liberation, of being free of the web that I had spun around myself. Every individual I guess has the right to live however they want to as long as it is justified to them. If that inadvertently means somebody is let down, it is okay. Easier said than done I know. Plus when it is me being let down, one part of me just wants me to cut the crap and make the person suffer.

I must accept, I have tried the 'make them suffer' route. I know where to hit to make it hurt the most and I haven't shied away from using my power over them. Of course, 'them' refers to just one person. The person, I am afraid, is the love of my life. Somewhere I know I will never be the love of his life. I know that even if I somehow made him stay, I will be the unhappier person among us. Whenever I have 'made him suffer' ( I just want to sound sinister), it is me who has suffered more. The love of my life is also the bane of my life. So after almost a year and half of being through my personal hell and back, now I have come to a point where if I get him, fine, if I don't, fine.

I know me, I like me with all my shortcomings. I am going to make the idea of 'me' work. That is entirely in my hands. Only I know the many miracles I have seen. I have seen God at work in my life.

So now, I am taking my life back. The ones who want to stay can stay, the ones who want to leave can leave. No pressure.No melodrama. If I hurt, I will turn that into fire that'll drive me. I have done that before and I can very well do it again.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

For as long as I remember, I have tried, in all my ignorance and anger, to understand the concept, if I may call it that, of God. Coming from a fairly religious, but not obsessively so, family, I was taught a couple of chants, at a very young age, to say while I offered my prayers twice a day. I believe that is how a child is introduced to the societal idea of God in India, atleast and I see no harm in it at all. Infact, it is always incredibly touching to see little kids in temples, dressed in all their finery, joining their little hands and touching their foreheads to the ground while prostrating in front of the idol.

But kids grow up. Growing up brings along a lot of questions. To grow up in a city of free thinkers meant that I too questioned a lot of things and tried to justify to myself, a lot of stuff that I saw being accepted among the general public. The one point, I realised, that I disagreed with most on, was the idea of God.

To me, I never questioned His existence. I was never doubtful of the presence. All this beauty, this ingenuity, this amazing manner in which everything comes together, the enormity of the world, the universe, the mind, cannot, in my opinion, just happen. It is all just too beautiful to have just happened without a higher, deeper energy orchestrating it. Obviously, my poetic explanations won't find much ground with more rational minds. But to each, his own. There have been and are so many instances and occurrences every single day, every single second, that can make you question God. If He exists, and if He really loves us all, how can He let such atrocities happen around the world. There are innocents dying every single day, babies being born to the sounds of bullets and bombs, women and men being brutalised by devils who, in the name of God Himself, are ravaging the very idea of mankind. But inspite of all this, I can never bring myself to question His presence. I see the beauty of mankind everyday. It just doesn't make it to the news. I see it in the way a octagenarian husband gets his old, sick wife who can hardly walk, to my hospital from many kilometers away to get her dentures made. I see it in the way the sound of my mother's voice chokes me up at 'Hello'. I see it in the way I met one of the most precious people in my life, my teacher, guide, friend, mentor all rolled into one when I was at my lowest and my heart skips a few beats every time I even think about him, even though I haven't met him in the longest time. I see it in the way my heart has mustered up the courage to pray so hard for the happiness of a person who couldn't find it in his heart to love me back. To me, this is the proof of God. Yes, babies are being born to the sound of bullets and bombs but they're born, out of love. There is still love amidst all that violence.

After all these years, in the place I am now mentally, I hold my idea of God very dear. God is not a jewelery laden beautiful person sitting on a throne to judge everybody and who'll get pleased if you shower His idol with a lot of expensive stuff. I cannot bring myself to believe in a God who will throw you in a place called hell where you'll burn for all eternity. I cannot believe in a God who you have to be scared of. God, to me, is made of Love. And then, I can see Him everywhere. I can see Him in the way He got me here, taught me to love intensely but still find the courage to let go of things not meant for me, to forgive, to accept even those with ideas radically different from mine, to soar higher than I ever thought I could, to be free of bitterness, to be free.....

Everything is an opportunity to learn something. If God has put some person or some situation in your life, it is because He wants you to learn something from it. Be someone God can be proud of.

Love can be a fickle thing. The point is to just love, just send it outwards. It coming back towards you is not a pre-requisite. It won't, a lot of times. But take heart in the fact that you still loved and owned upto it, even when you knew it meant heartbreaks, every moment of everyday. Even when you loved someone incapable of understanding it's depth or they probably had their own story that you couldn't be a part of. Even when you felt like you were walking on broken shards of glass while being out of air to breathe. Know that this will all end one day. You will still love but it won't hurt that much anymore. The air will seep in and you will stop bleeding. And when you come out the other end without any bitterness or any sense of entitlement, you will know the greatness of love.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Monday, October 13, 2014

Anyone who has read most posts on my blog, and I suspect there is only one person to have done that and that's me, would know that I have and do ramble a lot about being happy and finding happiness. As someone who knows no moderation when it comes to feeling, I've been running after happiness for many years, without success. I've tried everything and yet I have never been in a continued state of being happy, ever. This is not to say that my life sucks, infact I have pretty much everything that is required for a comfortable and should've-been-happy life. There have been times when I've been insanely 'happy' but that never lasts.

And then, all of a sudden, matters of bigger importance took over and my 'Pursuit of Happyness' took a backseat. The year of 2013 presented two extreme phases in its two halves. I faced the most crushing failure I've faced in my young life and then, in the latter half, I found what I was looking for all these years. 1st July, 2013 was the day the rest of my life began. I was on the road to my salvation, without even knowing it. I discovered things about myself I never knew. In a place away from all the added comforts of a television, a PC, internet, friends, with just the basic needs of a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on, I found God.

I've always been a hard-working person. It is in my DNA. But what I did in those 6 months wasn't hard work, it never felt like work. I read and I read but never did it feel like I was doing something foreign or something that required energy. The one time I did not approach something with the purpose of looking for happiness, well, my idea of it anyway, I found it. I spent those months only studying. It was only books, no family, no friends, no hobbies, nothing. But what I didn't realise was that while I was putting my everything into the purpose in front of me, I was also cleansing my mind unconsciously. My anger, my ever-present anger disappeared. My anger, that had even alienated me from my family, left me. My complaints, so many of them, stopped being complaints at all. I got lighter and I felt it. All the baggage I had been carrying around for no reason disappeared my no conscious effort on my part.
I felt God again. After all these years, I felt His presence. I felt it everywhere I went. Even when I was lying on my bed, waiting for sleep to come, I could feel this incredible energy filling me up and brimming over. And there was no materialistic reason for it. There was nothing to attribute it to. It just was. It just is.

That is what, I then realised, is Happiness. True happiness won't depend on things that you acquire or experiences that you have. True happiness just is. And that is my proof , for God. But this isn't proof that I can give to someone. It is to be achieved and earned and experienced.